Inventor focuses on web security

Call him the Wizard of Spuyten Duyvil. 

Inventor Omer Tripp, 36, a resident of Netherland Avenue, is one of just 900 IBM employees worldwide who have earned the title “Master Inventor.” 

The tech giant has some 431,212 employees; Mr. Tripp himself has filed 61 patents since he started work at the company in 2007. In 2012, the number of patents he filed amounted to over 1 percent of IBM’s total filings worldwide.

“It’s kind of a sixth sense you start having, of when it’s a good invention,” Mr. Tripp explained.

 Though he is not an inventor in the traditional sense, standing in a lightning storm with a kite and a key, his work, which focuses on the application of web security, is an integral part of technology users’ experiences.

If you have avoided malware, viruses and privacy invasions while surfing the Internet or using your phone recently, some of the credit may go to Mr. Tripp. 

Many computer users have had the experience of clicking on a website and seeing a reassuring symbol certifying that a website is “safe.” That stems from a patent Mr. Tripp created.

Other patents by the local inventor focus on user privacy. Mr. Tripp himself relates to the experience of browsing the web only to realize advertisements are tailored a bit too closely to his interests for comfort. 

“You’re like, what’s going on here? I never disclosed this information voluntarily,” he said. 

He is dedicated to making technology less complicated — and safer — for users. 

“A lot of our work is how to let you tell the device how you expect it to behave,” he said. 

Born in Jerusalem, Mr. Tripp’s interest in inventing dated back to an early age. As a child, he remembers creating “Transformer”-like contraptions that could morph easily from one shape to another.

“I remember it because I spent hours in that mode as a child,” he said. “Now I see my son playing and it brings me back to that.”

Although he grew up inventing and innovating, he was not immediately drawn to computer science. He earned his bachelor’s in math, humanities and cognitive science in Israel.